


Crimes and Criminations: A Love Story in Many Parts

by Squeeful



Category: The Professionals
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-24
Updated: 2010-05-24
Packaged: 2017-10-09 16:45:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/89548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Squeeful/pseuds/Squeeful
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three crimes, three crime scenes, one man beside you</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

It was the girl in the rubbish bin that did it. For the past three months Bodie has been expecting his obligatory partner to crack under the double strain of hard work and harder villains. CI-5 didn't deal with the piddling stuff after all and the cases the Met worked could hardly compare to the ones they now handled. To give Doyle credit, he has been handling it better than Bodie had expected.

Still, whatever Doyle had done with the boys in blue, it must have given him something resembling competence because he was cool as the proverbial cucumber in the face of the stink and the blood.

Bodie stared around him in disgust. It was filthy here. Not what he wanted at all. City life they had promised him. Fine, clean action in the heart of London, not a woods or bog to be found. Instead he got muck. Paper muck, partner muck, legal muck, and now real muck clinging to his shoes and threatening the hems of his trouser legs with its dirtiness. Yuck.

The girl couldn't have been more than ten, with her coltish legs akimbo around the bags of refuse. Her little face was just starting to lose the baby roundness and between her blue lips Bodie could see two over-large adult teeth she would never grow into. She looked like someone's thrown-away doll.

A vagrant had been bin diving when he came across her body under two leaking bags and half an armoire. That would have been the end of it and no one the wiser if he hadn't bolted from the scene and straight into the arms of the local beat cop. It would have been hard for even the laziest constable to ignore the fear and jabbering about a dead child, even from a smelly bum. PC Raithman wasn't close to the laziest; he was an old friend of Doyle's and, knowing that his mate was now higher up the law and order ladder, had rung him up in the middle of the night to help. It had once been Doyle's patch of London and he felt a sort of proprietary interest in it. This outing was completely off the books of course, no way Cowley would authorise it and judging by the way PC plod was hedging about letting his boss know who his friend was, not likely to be taken well by the Metropolitan's finest either.

He thought he understood why Doyle was out here, but Bodie could see no reason why _he_ had to be standing amidst rotting food and plastic at three in the morning. Just because he had been camped out on Doyle's couch did not mean he wanted to be packed up and brought along when Doyle got the call. It was freezing out; he could see his breath and it felt like his nose was going to fall off. Soon his fingers would freeze and then where would he be? Useless to Cowley if his would-be partner didn't get on with it. He half expected it to start raining, just to compound his misery. Bodie tried stamping his feet and blowing on his hands to demonstrate his displeasure at both the cold and his presence at the scene.

Doyle ignored him to straighten the girl's limbs and brush back her dark hair. "Contusions around the neck consistent with throttling -- probably an adult male by the size of the bruises, though we'll have to wait for the forensic team to tell us for sure." While his voice was calm and professional, his hands had the gentleness of a parent tucking a child into bed.

"Who is she?" Doyle flipped over her collar as he spoke. "If we're lucky her mother might have sewn her name somewhere."

She had.

Aminah Haqqi. They had a name for the child. It was the start of a case. It meant Bodie was not going back to bed.

~~~

He knew the doorbell was sounding upstairs in Doyle's flat, but he gave it a third ring for good measure. The entry phone on the other end was picked up, but no husky voice came down through the speakers to greet or berate him. "It's me," Bodie said. The lock buzzed and he pushed the door open.

It was comfortably warm in the flat, even to Bodie's liking, but Doyle was a prickly lump under a quilt, settling himself in the corner of the sofa.

"Is that the report?" Bodie nodded at the folder on the coffee table. It sat eerily in the middle of the one clear patch, as if all other objects had been repelled by it.

Doyle grunted and burrowed further into the corner of cushion and arm.

"What does it say?" Bodie sat in the comfortable-looking armchair across from Doyle. It turned out to be about as giving as a rock. He picked up the report and opened the file.

Doyle twitched a shoulder. All that was visible was a vague ripple under the counterpane.

Rolling his eyes at the contrary man, Bodie flipped over the cover and started reading the first page. The crackling of the onion skin echoed abnormally loudly in the room. "It was a man."

"Or a woman with hands like a rugby player," Doyle rasped as if he'd either been yelling or hadn't used his voice in days.

"Do they have any clue why he did it?"

Another one-shouldered shrug followed by a throat-clearing cough. "Does it matter? Because he could and she was there, probably."

Bodie read on through dry, factual horror. "She wasn't raped, according to the report."

"Oh yes, there's that at least." A bark of a laugh. "Probably didn't need to, the bastard, gets his jollies just from killing."

"You think it was a sick bastard, done it before? A serial killer?"

"Who knows. Could be. Could've been her father and she just wouldn't shut up that night." The messy head sank further into the mound of quilt.

Bodie toyed with the edge of the folder, bending it back and forth until it ripped between his fingers. "Throttling is an awfully personal way of killing someone. Slow."

"I'll take your word for it. He didn't just strangle her. Hit her on the head too."

So he had read it.

There was a flurry of movement and bedding as Doyle threw off the quilt and stalked into the kitchen. "Want any dinner? I couldn't stomach it, but I know you can always eat something. I made some poached chicken earlier; it's cold now, but it's still good," floated out of the doorway, growing louder as Bodie followed the voice.

"Here." Doyle shoved a fork and knife into his lax hands. "Sit." He pushed Bodie into a noxious green chair.

_Whose brilliant idea was avocado green and putrid yellow décor?_ Bodie found himself facing a plate of slightly congealed chicken in a thin, herby-lemon sauce and a side of buttered carrots. Never one to back down from a challenge or a meal, Bodie ate. "This is good. I didn't know you could cook. Properly, I mean. Usually you make something boiled in a bag, same as anyone else."

Doyle leaned back against the counter and gave another one-shouldered shrug. Bodie wanted to shake him until words came out and he actually said what he meant. Annoying git wanted to, he could feel it, but he wasn't and it was making Bodie's life tenser than it needed to be.

 

Maybe it was time for him to get more direct in his approach. Obviously it was the case bothering him. Or not-case as it wasn't even their jurisdiction. "Will there be any further investigation?"

"What, for a dead coloured girl?" Doyle said with due disgust. "Nah. She's a file in the back of a drawer. Just another one of hundreds."

He would have left it, but Bodie was getting better at understanding the complex language of "Doyle" and the tension across his partner's shoulders belied the lazy way he leant against the kitchen counter.

Bodie put down his fork and pushed away the plate. "You can't believe that."

"You do." There was an insouciance to Doyle's voice that couldn't be real. He continued leaning against the counter and crossed his arms across his chest, closing himself i, (and glaring at the floor.

"Well, yeah, but that's me. It's not..."

"Not what?" Doyle looked up and pinned Bodie with flinty eyes.

_Now he's just being deliberately dense_, Bodie thought. "Not you." Where was his bleeding heart partner in this bitter man?

"It's not me? Not Raymond Doyle, the crazy idealist, soft-hearted and soft-headed ex-copper?" He picked up a towel and began cleaning sauce from his hands. "I'm telling you, Bodie, I've seen things too, right here in London. That's not the first murdered child I've seen, not by a long shot, and it won't be the last. So don't tell me what I do and do not know about the world."

"Look, mate," Bodie felt pricked to defend himself. "Why are you getting so worked up over this? Yeah, yeah, it's horrible, but in the end it's just one little girl. When it's a pile of small bodies, then you can complain to me."

Doyle had an eloquent glare as he stopped wiping his hands and glowered at Bodie. "This isn't a pissing match over dead bodies. I cannot beat you for numbers, but I can't say that is a contest I'd care to win."

Quite unexpectedly, Bodie was discomfited and he fidgeted in his chair under the clear, green stare of the man. Damn Doyle and his unflinching morality.

Doyle started up and threw the tea towel across the room. "Just go away, Bodie," came his tired voice.

There was nothing he could think of to do or say to that, so Bodie left.

~~~

Doyle was not available for the next few weekends. Bodie had only unconfirmed suspicions as to his whereabouts and activities until he overheard Doyle speaking to a police superintendent on the lounge phone. Bodie haunted the doorway, just out of sight, taking the time to really study the man who called himself his partner. A rough-hewn thirty with improbable hair, there was nothing particularly extraordinary about Doyle, but there was nothing usual either.

A click and a sigh signaled the return of the phone to the cradle.

"They find anything?"

"Not a thing. There's nothing to find. There's no semen, no fingerprints, she wasn't killed there, no one saw her leave with anyone, no one saw her body being dumped. All a big nothing." Doyle ran a hand through his hair and over his eyes; he was tired, so very tired and all for apparently nothing. "All we have is a possible blood group and the bastard's type O, along with nearly half of everyone else."

"Have you questioned an--"

"Everyone. Twice. The entire neighborhood and her family. Who are devastated, by the way."

Bodie would never admit to anything so soft as a twist of compassion, but Doyle looked so dejected, his face falling into heavy lines from lack of sleep and too many cares, that there may have been a flutter of something sympathetic that defrosted Bodie's usually cool expression. "Come on," he said. And for the first time Bodie touched him in friendship, slinging an arm around surprisingly broad shoulders and guiding him to the door. "Work may be the refuge for people who have nothing better to do, but as we have nothing better to do, let us seek refuge with the Cow. We're five minutes late anyway."

"Refuge with the Cow? Refuge from, more like." But Doyle snorted with now-familiar distaste and straightened up.


	2. Interlude

Fighting an urban war, Bodie found, wasn't so very different from a jungle one. He had traded in trees for high-rises and veldts for subways, but people were still nasty little buggers when you scraped below the surface. There was always something particularly ugly about the way they killed.

Take that bird there. Comes home from the office one day, cooks a nice supper, and beats in the head of her boyfriend with a meat tenderizer as he's watching telly.

_Huh_, he thought as he watched her being led away by two uniformed men. _Find the humanity in that._

"She loved him." Doyle popped up beside him like the irrepressible ferret he was.

"Huh?"

"Man of eloquence, you are. Tracy Hartman. She loved her boyfriend."

Bodie looked over at the blood-smeared woman being put in handcuffs. She was crying and trying to reach out to "her Kellen, her dear lovely Kellen".

"You're pulling my leg." Bodie eyed his partner; no, didn't look like one of Doyle's more macabre jokes, but you could never tell with the man sometimes.

"No, really. Loved him like a lamb its shepherd."

"She bashed his bloody head in!" It was a measure of his astonishment that Bodie did not wince at his choice of words.

"Yeah. But she loved him." A shrug indicated Doyle's own confusion over the matter.

Bodie eyes his partner sideways. "People are mad."

Doyle snorted. "You're telling me, mate. You're telling me. Anyway, we're crazy enough ourselves." He looked away, a lingering sadness in the corners of his mouth.

Inspiration struck and Bodie whistled a tune Doyle recognized as an old Beatles song. "'Maxwell's Silver Hammer'? You're a sick, sick bastard, sunshine." But he laughed anyway.

Maybe they were as crazy as everyone thought.

Either way, it was one less IRA nutter to deal with and that was a hard thing to regret.


	3. Part Two

The scene was horrible. There was blood everywhere, more than one would think the human body could hold, and all of it a vicious red. Something dripped onto Bodie's nose. Automatically he reached up to wipe it off and his fingers came away dark and sticky.

"Oh god," said Doyle. "It's on the ceiling."

It was on the ceiling, on the walls, pooled on the floor, and dried dripping down the windows. Plastic sheets were laid out in pathways that slid and stuck underfoot. What little furniture was in the room was soaked in blood and the very air was permeated with the ferric tang so that every breath drawn filled the lungs with the scent.

One body lay sprawled with head and limbs in one direction, spilled entrails another. A second was propped up against a wall where it had fallen, surrounded and perforated by a cloud of bullet holes.

"What the devil happened here?!" Cowley's voice behind them made everyone jump and turn guiltily around.

"Falling out among thieves, looks like." Bodie pointed out the obvious as usual.

"How did this happen? It was on your watch, you fools!"

"Sorry, sir, no excuses." Catching sight of his partner's increasingly still face, Bodie stepped slightly in front of their boss and drew attention to himself with an insolent at ease.

Cowley frowned tenebrously at the two of them, his mind already back on the situation at hand. "Ach, well, don't just stand there, report! Tell me what went on and get on with your work."

Doyle shook himself. "Whoever it was must have come in by the back door. Judging by the spent casings and that splatter over there --" In the middle of the sentence, Doyle's face turned a sickly shade of grey and he bolted from the scene for the small bathroom down the hall where he quickly made reacquaintance with his breakfast. From the smell, he was not the first one that morning. He retched into the cracked porcelain bowl, bringing up tea, toast, and what felt like his toes. After the first couple heaves Doyle had nothing left to bring up but bile and he emptied his stomach of even that for a few minutes. Doyle knelt and shivered at the foot of the bowl, clammy sweat breaking out all over his body. He flushed his disgust and watched it swirl away down the drain. He rinsed out his mouth under the tap and spat, trying not to see arterial spray in the gush of water from his lips.

When he returned, he found the sight no less stomach-turning, but he bit his tongue to distract himself until the metallic flood of blood in his mouth made the nausea rise up again.

Over out of the way of the crew, Bodie was in stilted conversation with a forensics man and Cowley and none of that little group appeared very comfortable. Malcolm looked resigned, Cowley looked angry, and Bodie stood there stiff as one of Doyle's tin soldiers.

Doyle snapped on a pair of rubber gloves and gathered up scattered and bloody papers. From torn photographs to newspaper clippings to tax forms, they all went in the same pile. Not his to sort after all. Let the experts make of it what they will. He was just the rubbish man in the end. He nearly had to run out again when, upon inspecting a splotch mark on an address book, he found a tuft of hair and bits of what must be bone and jelly-like brain.

A warm hand gripped his elbow and gave him support. "It's not something you ever get used to," Bodie rumbled in his ear. His face was hard and blank, his eyes troubled. A squeeze anchored them both.

Doyle looked back at him and shook his head.

"Come on, let's get some fresh air. This lot'll take ages before they're done." Bodie steered him out the door by the elbow he had never let go of.

In the courtyard, shocked neighbors where clustered in groups under the watchful eyes of equally unnerved PCs. A police cordon hadn't been erected yet and as Bodie and Doyle watched, a few spectators pressed forward only to be herded back by a uniform.

"Surely you've seen scenes like this before?" Bodie nodded back at the flat behind them and its bloody mess. The civilian scene in front of them hardly even registered.

"Yeah, used to see it all the time in the Met, but like you said, it's not something you ever get used to."

"Or you hope you don't." Bodie gave him a tight smile which Doyle returned.

Ambulance men carried out the bodies on stretchers and laid them out on the lawn in a neat row. Doyle thought there was something morbidly appropriate about the red blankets covering them. Exsanguinated bodies covered by blood-red cloth. Almost poetic. He shied away from the thought.

"Why this one?" Bodie broke their silence. "You've seen just as bad and worse."

"Dunno," Doyle lied. "It's nothing in particular. Just catches me sometimes, you know."

"Yeah."

They bumped shoulders there in the chill afternoon and watched crumpled bodies being taken away and clouds scuttling across an obscene blue sky.

~~~

It was well past midnight when they stumbled into Bodie's flat, too exhausted and shaken to do more than remove shoes and trousers before falling into bed. That it was together was of no notice to either of them as propriety took second place to comfort in the face of soul-numbing weariness. Neither of them would admit to wanting the comfort of another person less than an arm's reach away. They turned off the lights and pulled up the covers and lay there, stiff and staring at the ceiling until their bodies couldn't hold off sleep any longer.

That night Doyle was plagued by abstract nightmares of white-speckled red. He wept amber tears until a jerk yanked him from his own mind and he was falling (_falling_) through a morass of synæsthesitic cries. Doyle slammed into the bed to lie there gasping, terrified of an unknown nothingness, and clung to the mattress, unable to move, while the world spun beneath him. Eventually the strange paralysis lifted and he could sit up. A malevolence followed him from his dreams and clung to the grey shadows of his consciousness and the room like smoke.

Not wanting to disturb the lump under the covers next to him, Doyle slid out of the bed as noiselessly as possible and shuffled out of the room on chilled bare feet. He pulled on Bodie's spare robe in the hall. The flat was nearly lightless and although he knew it was irrational, Doyle felt the darkness press in on him. _Was he imagining that cold draught on every patch of bare skin?_ He shivered and pulled the robe closer around him.

He headed for the kitchen, hoping a cup of tea would calm him enough that he could rest without the visions that had yanked him from slumber. Sleep, Doyle knew, was not likely to come again. He was too revved up with his nerves jangling and his heart beating just that much too fast although his brain and body cried out for rest.

In the dim light from the street lamps a floor below, Doyle found the kettle, filled it, and plugged it in. The tea bags took longer to find and then he nearly stewed his cup staring out the shape-filled window. He ladled in the sugar to cover the bitterness of the resulting liquid.

Mug in shaking hand, he was nearly to the stairs again before he noticed a light by the sofa. It was Bodie, still as carven rock, staring at where he had been holding a book; the paperback lay at his feet, broken-spined and spavined on the floor. A single incandescent bulb illuminated the scene and cast its jaundicing light over the man and spilled onto the surrounding furniture.

"Why're you up?" Eloquence in the darkest hour was not Doyle's forté.

"Can't sleep," Bodie spoke to his hands. "Keep seeing...things."

Doyle could understand that and he nodded, but Bodie still wasn't looking at him and couldn't see. "You should have woken me."

"What for? So we could both be sleepless?" Bodie glanced up then and neither of them could look away.

"We both are anyway," Doyle tried to quip with a mouth-twitch of a failed smile. He wanted to look away -- anywhere -- but couldn't. "I'd stay up with you. Sit with you in the light." Doyle fiddled with the robe's tie, limp in his empty hand. He knew he wasn't making much sense, but he hoped that Bodie would understand what he was trying to say.

Bodie did. He shuffled sideways on the sofa and Doyle sat next to him where he had been, feeling the body warmth Bodie had left behind on the cushion. "Thank you." Doyle gave him his mug of tea.

They sat there, sharing tea and silent sympathy as the building settled around them.

Doyle stared across the dark of the room to the wall display of antique guns. "I saw art in it this afternoon. It reminded me of a painting I saw years ago. All colourful swirls and glistening patterns. 'Pretty' I thought.

"Oh, Bodie, what is this job doing to me? What has it _done_ to me?" Doyle gave a little hiccough and dropped his forehead to rest on Bodie's shoulder. It was warm and solidly muscled and he drew strength from its steadiness as he often did.

He stayed like that until the lack of response grew uncomfortable. Maybe it was time to go back upstairs. He gathered himself to sit up again.

Feeling the shift and the beginnings of withdrawal in the man next to him -- not wanting to lose him -- Bodie took a breath and voiced his greatest fear. "I saw myself." He lowered the still-steaming mug of tea onto his lap and clasped his hands around its fleeting warmth.

The movement joggled Doyle's head and he pressed closer, eyes still closed, reaching out with one lean hand to grasp Bodie's wrist. "No," he said with quiet emphasis. "I know who you are."


	4. Epilogue

Outside the sun rises to shine weak, first-light rays through a third storey window. It catches on the motes of dust floating in the air and sets them to sparkling until they fill room with gold. It glints off the kettle left out on the board in a flare of brilliant whiteness.

There are a thousand dawns that Bodie believed he'd never see. Ones he never expected to survive to witness and others he never dreamt of being possible.

He never thought he'd be here with Doyle's head on his thigh and his partner's hair curling about his fingers. It has been a long week (and longer night) and Doyle's asleep half-dressed in his clothes, but, stinking and snoring, Bodie wouldn't have him anywhere else.

Doyle's sleep has a peace that Bodie is glad to be able to give. He has so little that it is a gift to share it with this most important man.

The man in his lap is waking now and Bodie faces a choice. Taking this chance could bring him something greater, but holding back would keep what he has. This has the potential to break them.

Sleepy eyes blink with a ridiculous fluttering of lashes in an effort to clear sand from lids and Doyle gives a slow, infinitely joyous smile.

And Bodie leans over and kisses him for a newborn promise.

They make love there on the floor, full of soft gasps and clutching hands and it is better than tears.


End file.
